appendix1-07

On March 8, 1995, Project Gutenberg completed its 250th offeringto the Internet Public Library, as many have come to call it.

A great number of changes have come to the Internet since we gotthe Complete Works of Shakespeare out as out 100th publication--some of them extraordinarily good, some of the of more moderatedgoodness, and some on the other end of the spectrum

Probably the most exciting two recent events are the 20,000 yearold cave paintings discovered in France in January, released forthe news media in February, and posted as #249 on March 8th withseveral versions of each painting having been collected, in both.GIF and .JPG formats.

This is particularly exciting when you realize that the Dead SeaScrolls were discovered in 1947 and that no one outside a selectfew ever even saw them or pictures of them until just a few weresmuggled out on Macintosh disks a couple years ago; four decadeswent by without the public getting any view of them.

The French Ministry of Culture has been very swift in getting anextraordinary event such as this covered by the general media ona worldwide basis only one month after their discovery, and alsohas taken only a week or two to grant Project Gutenberg a permitto post these wonderful paintings on the Internet.

On the other hand, the future of the Internet Public Library maybe in serious danger if we do not insure that information may becontinually forthcoming to the public. As many of you know, theProject Gutenberg Etexts are 90% from the Public Domain with 10%reproduced by permission. However, there is a movement to ceasethe introduction of materials into the Public Domain in Congress[of the United States] which would effectively stop the entry ofthis kind of information into general Internet circulation. 200years ago the US copyright was established at 14 years accordingto the speeches of Senator Orrin Hatch, sponsoring one bill, andthen extended another 14, then another 28, then extended to lifeof the author plus another 50 years after, and 75 years for thatkind of copyright which is created by a corporation.

This means that if you took your 5 year old kid to see "The LionKing" when it came out, the kid would have to be 80 years old tohave lived long enough to have a copy that was not licensed by acommercial venture. The fact that the average person will neverreach the age of 80 effectively creates a permanent copyright todeny public access during the expected lifetimes of any of us.

However, this is not enough. . .the new bill is designed to killoff ANY chance that even 1% of the youngest of us will ever haveour own rights to an unlicensed copy of any material produced inour lifetimes because if these bills are passed, our young kid aparagraph above will have to reach the age of 100 to have rightsto the materials published today, while the rights of inventors,protected by patent law, will still expire in 17 years.

Why is it more important that we all can buy Public Domain legalcopies of the latest supersonic toaster less than two decades ofproduction after the original, but it is not as important for usto be well read, well informed and well educated?